Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

19An Alternative tothe Market System?Within a market system, we can see—and I have noted—some alternative forms of it. These will continue to developas each nation copes in its own way, with such problems asspillovers, corporate power, and inequality. But is there inour time an alternative to the market system as a whole? Achoice between market system and . . . ? Well, that is ourquestion. What is the present alternative, if any? Do societiesface such grand choices as the old ones between capitalismand socialism or between market system and commandsystem?As an overarching method of social coordination, theclumsy mechanism I called physical planning—no money,no prices—is out. Nowhere in the world does there appearto be an interest in a moneyless system of central determinationof production together with a governmental allocationof goods and services in which individual persons andfamilies have no immediate choice. Or, to say it anotherway, everywhere in the world the advantage of consumermarket choice, for both consumer and harried governmentofficial, is acknowledged. However production is controlledor planned, there seems to be no general method of distributingthe output than by permitting each person or familyto buy what is wanted by drawing on a sum of money thatrepresents the person’s or family’s share in the total cooperativelyproduced output. It spares both administrator andconsumers the irritations, arbitrariness, and inefficiency ofration coupons. Of course, some goods and services require